USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt require additional hardware. Considering that the 4S now has a multimode GSM/CDMA chipset I would guess that the innards are even more size constrained than the 4, which was packed tightly.

Thunderbolt chips are early tech, and I doubt they've become small enough to fit into iOS devices. I would love a thunderbolt connection to my iphone in the future though. I find wireless syncing kind of pointless, considering I'm going to be next to my Macbook when I sync.

I could be wrong but I don't think the Thunderbolt can carry charging voltage as it is supposed to be an optical technology. iPhones only sync when they are charging so this wouldn't work.

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Thunderbolt can use optical or copper cables. Right now I think they only use copper cables since the Thunderbolt ports double as DisplayPorts. I think the optical Thunderbolt spec wouldn't be backwards compatible with DisplayPort.

This. It would be stupid to sell a phone that their computers can't fully utilise, what with Tim Cook talking about the integrated experience at the end.

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This is wrong. Next year, Macs WILL have USB 3 support, and the phones will be futureproofed. Furthermore, most people who own IOS devices do NOT own a Mac. USB 3 is fully backwards compatible meaning mac users CAN use the tech, just not at the speeds.

If you want a USB compatible IOS device, I'd say wait for iPhone 5. And I doubt that'll appear until 2012. Obviously, given Apple's unwillingness to say HSPA+ is 4G, the next iPhone will be called the iPhone 4G. And since it'll AGAIN have "4" in the title, do you really think they're changing the case to allow room for a thunderbolt port?

Thunderbolt can use optical or copper cables. Right now I think they only use copper cables since the Thunderbolt ports double as DisplayPorts. I think the optical Thunderbolt spec wouldn't be backwards compatible with DisplayPort.

Because Macs don't have USB 3 so they'd be leaving everyone with a Mac, their own computer, behind (and they want people to stay in the ecosystem so they want each of their products to interact nicely with each other) and thunderbolt is still not that widely adopted so they'd leave a lot of people behind if they did it by Thunderbolt.

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